The Worst of...

Jetset; 2001

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In the average lifetime, a human in an industrialized nation will spend three and a half years eating, six months on the toilet, and twelve years watching TV. We'll grow an average of two meters of nasal hair, kiss for two full weeks, and blink 415 million times. These are just a few of the various facts of life proffered in Black Box Recorder's video for "The Facts of Life," one of four included on the multimedia portion of The Worst of Black Box Recorder.

Consider those facts for a second. Over the course of a lifetime, that's a lot of television, and not a whole lot of kissing. It's enough to make you want to skip those 3:00 a.m. reruns of "Dear John" and give someone close to you a quick peck to set things right. The members of Black Box Recorder-- Ex-Auteur Luke Haines, former Jesus and Mary Chain drummer John Moore, and vocalist Sarah Nixey-- seem to have mundanities like this on their minds a lot, taking the state of modern life and weaving it into a manifesto of wry observations and stinging commentary.

You can almost consider their songs to be the black box recording of our decadent, materialistic society's final moments, before our engines fail and we crash into a churning sea of revolution (or, at least, recession). Considering that most of these songs were written a few years ago, it's amazing how well Luke Haines' pre-millennial tension translates to the changed world we've been living in for the past month.

The Worst of Black Box Recorder opens with a gleeful, airy romp through Jacques Brel's "Seasons in the Sun" (originally a bonus track from the U.S. edition of their debut, 1998's England Made Me), which essentially sums up the band's output with its sunny melody and absolutely morbid lyrics. The sound is totally straight-faced, yet you can picture the band cracking a smile at their own gallows humor as Nixey's ultra-femme voice caresses the simple arrangement.

Initially, I questioned the appropriateness of Black Box Recorder releasing a b-sides compilation after only two albums, but The Worst Of proves itself largely worthy over the course of its twelve tracks. It's definitely the trio's most varied release, and it serves as a decent introduction to their discography. U.S. fans might have reservations, though, as anyone who owns the domestic versions of their two proper albums already owns six of these songs.

Still, it's nice to hear some of the band's grittier moments after last year's incredibly smooth The Facts of Life, which occasionally steered a little too close to adult contemporary territory for my ears. The majority of this disc, on the other hand, is uptempo, and actually feels a little more designed for a mass audience than some of the band's a-sides. "Lord Lucan is Missing" and "Start as You Mean to Go On" possess the crunch of some of Haines' louder work with the Auteurs, like After Murder Park's "Light Aircraft on Fire" and "Lenny Valentino" from Now I'm a Cowboy.

The off-kilter guitar figures of "Watch the Angel, Not the Wire" offset Nixey's sing-song vocals nicely as she expounds upon perception and free will. Another highlight is "Brutality," a catchy, sugary-sweet tune lamenting the passage of "doing the decent thing," and drinking and driving with equal reverence. Theremins whistle countermelodies in the background as palm-muted guitars nudge the rhythm along, interlocking with multi-layered analog synths, creating a song that's both gleefully subversive and eminently hummable.

"The Facts of Life," as remixed by Chocolate Layers (aka Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey from Pulp), is imbued with the icy chill that graced Pulp's "Seductive Barry," while adding samples of children offering their theories on where babies come from, and the same masturbation instruction tape that Italy's Valvola sampled for "Flashing Light." "You have to sit for a few minutes while the doctors phone up for the babies," says one little girl, hesitantly, before a seductive female voice coos about synching your body's reactions to obtain a perfect orgasm. Otherwise, the song is kept largely intact, and the remix actually improves a great deal upon the original.

As previously mentioned, the multimedia portion of the disc tacks on four videos, the most noteworthy of which is, far and away, the aforementioned spot for "The Facts of Life." Along with the flashed statistics, it features Nixey as a school teacher with a penchant for form-fitting skirts, and two private school kids doing themselves up to the hilt in front of mirrors, only to walk right by each other at the end. The video for "England Made Me" gets the title of Most Disturbing, with Nixey's face appearing on dozens of bodies a la Richard D. James. (Well, it's not quite that disturbing, but it comes close.)

So, thankfully, The Worst of Black Box Recorder turns out to be quite a misnomer. It's a good starting point for the uninitiated, and UK fans who held off on buying the singles will find it extremely rewarding. On the other hand, if you already own six of these songs, it's up to you to decide whether or not you're that much of a completist. Either way, The Worst of Black Box Recorder is a solid disc that showcases the band's range better than either of their albums, and a great soundtrack to have going while you're growing all that nasal hair.